uTorrent Encryption

uTorrent:
uTorrent is one of the most widely used BitTorrent clients that have over 150 million users. The
uTorrent program was designed to offer functionality that uses minimal computer resources (Azmat,
Hamdan & Jusoff 2009).

Figure 1: uTorrent (beencrypted 2019)

uTorrent Encryption:
uTorrent Encryption is a process to convert the data into a coded form, especially to prevent
unauthorized access. uTorrent encryption protocol provides with the encryption of the torrent traffic.
Without the encryption, all the people on one network such as public Wi-Fi can usually read all the
data of each other (Srinivasan & Aldharrab 2019). Also, without encryption, Internet Service
Providers often use deep packet inspection for reading the data of its users, which can include data
transfers, downloads, and even the web history. Encryption protects against all these problems and
scrambles the data of its user and only allows the website or the server that is communicated with to
be able to read it (Syed Navaz et al. 2016).

Built-In Encryption:
This is free encryption that allows for encrypted data transfer between peers who also have the
encryption enabled. The problem with this encryption is that this allows connecting only with peers
who have encryption enabled. Also, this method only encrypt the torrent downloads but not the
web browsing. And this method will not hide the torrent IP address of the user (Itani, Kayssi &
Chehab 2016).

Figure 2: uTorrent Encryption Settings (Torrent VPN Guide 2019)

VPN encryption:
VPN encryption is very secure and offers following advantage over built-in torrent encryption
(Venckauskas et al. 2017):

 It is much stronger than built-in encryption.

 Using of VPN encryption will not reduce the number of peers which is the case in built-in.
 It will hide the real IP address in torrents to make the download anonymous and hard to be
traced.
 There is no need of any set up; it is just one click step.

Figure 4: uTorrent Encryption with VPN (B Encrypted 2019)

Goals of uTorrent Encryption:

The two major goals achieved through uTorrent encryption are:
Speed: uTorrent is one of the major users of the upstream bandwidth and is ahead of many
companies. So, many Internet Service Providers usually throttle (slow down) uploads and downloads
of the torrent. Internet service providers must be able to read the traffic and separate it from un-
throttled uses in order to throttle a specific software or service. Encryption prevents the Internet
service providers from reading of traffic and throttling it (Hays 2011).

Privacy: By default, downloads through torrents are unencrypted, which implies that Internet
service providers can check what is downloaded and how much of data is transferred via uTorrent.
The uTorrent encryption goal is to obfuscate the traffic of uTorrent and thus make it harder for the
internet service providers to detect it, the encrypted network connection on uTorrent is hard to
identify as uTorrent streams and thus is very hard to be blocked (Wang et al. 2015). Thus, making use
of encryption will prevent the Internet service providers from monitoring download and provide
privacy. The uTorrent encryption obfuscates the entire stream rather than only header which makes
uTorrent encryption really useful and makes it harder for the ISP’s to detect if the traffic is coming
from uTorrent (Srinivasan & Aldharrab 2019).

Figure 4: Hiding IP address (VPN 2019)

Strengths and weakness of uTorrent Encryption:

Strengths:
 The VPN provides the advantage of providing access to a remote network with total security
as by hiding the IP address of the user.
 This provides the user a complete security from Wi-Fi hotspots as they are fully encrypted.
 Figure 5: Encrypted traffic (TechNadu 2018)

 This allows users to make downloads without restrictions and protect them from copyright
infringement.
 The encryption hides the IP address thus hides the browsing and visits to websites from ISP’s.

Limitations
 uTorrent Encryption with VPN is not flawless; there are few limitations so the user needs to
make use of the device consciously.
 uTorrent VPN encryption does not guarantee complete anonymity, thus the encryption
through VPN has even some flaws.

Conclusion:
Concluding, uTorrent Encryption provides a pivotal security goal of privacy to users and enormous
speed functionality.

References:
Azmat, F, Hamdan, MI & Jusoff, K 2009, ‘Analysis of BitTorrent on an open source VPN technology to
end user’, Computer and Information Science, vol.1, no. 1, pp. 153-168

B Encrypted 2019, How To Encrypt BitTorrent Traffic – Complete Guide,B Encrypted, viewed 21 April
2019, < https://www.beencrypted.com/how-to-encrypt-bittorrent-traffic/>

beencrypted 2019, uTorrent , beencrypted, viewed 21 April 2019,

<https://www.beencrypted.com/torrenting/best-torrent-clients/utorrent/>
Hays, CB 2011, ‘Bypassing internet service provider traffic shaping with peer-to-peer file sharing
through deliberate false positives’, IET Communications, vol. 5, no. 11, p. 1540.

Itani, W, Kayssi, A & Chehab, A 2016, ‘Smart encryption channels for securing virtual machine-based
networked applications’, Security and Communication Networks, vol. 2, no. 6, pp. 507–518.

Srinivasan, A & Aldharrab, H 2019, ‘XTRA—eXtended bit-Torrent pRotocol for Authenticated covert
peer communication’, Peer-to-Peer Networking & Applications, vol. 12, no. 1, pp. 122-143.

Syed Navaz, AS, Asha, N, Chandrasekaran, V & Jayashree, J 2016, ‘Resourceful investigate encryption
method using data hunt in mobile cloud service’, ARPN Journal of Engineering and Applied Sciences,
vol. 13, no. 15, pp. 4543–4549

Torrent VPN Guide 2019, Torrent Encryption 101, Torrent, viewed 21 April 2019,

<https://www.best-bittorrent-vpn.com/torrent-encryption.html>

TechNadu 2018, Torrent Encryption Guide – How to Secure & Hide All Your P2P Traffic Data?,
TechNadu, viewed 21 April 2019,

<https://www.technadu.com/torrent-encryption/38363/>

Venckauskas, A, Jusas, V, Paulikas, K & Toldinas, J 2017, ‘Methodology to Investigate BitTorrent Sync
Protocol’, Computer Science & Information Systems, vol. 14, no. 1, pp. 197–218

VPN 2019, Hiding IP address,VPN, viewed 21 April 2019,

<https://vpn99.net/?a=2tbfft4t&oc=8244&os=&ol=en>

Wang, J, Hu, X, Xu, X & Yang, Y 2015, ‘A verifiable hierarchical circular shift cipher scheme for P2P
chunk exchanges’, Peer-to-Peer Networking & Applications, vol. 8, no. 1, pp. 78-103